Wiltshire
Sourced from Wikivoyage. Text is available under the CC-by-SA 3.0 license.
Cities, towns and villages
Cities
- Salisbury — a small city, the second largest town in Wiltshire, with a splendid cathedral
Towns
- Bradford on Avon
- – a fast growing community, the third largest town in Wiltshire
- Corsham
- – a bustling market town with a heady brew of heritage and shopping. Nearby Caen Hill Locks
- Malmesbury – town known for its historic abbey, one of the few English houses with a continual history from the 7th century through to the Dissolution of the Monasteries
- Melksham – the fifth largest town in Wiltshire
- – if you look past its sheer ugliness, it offers exceptional industrial heritage and a festival for every occasion
- Trowbridge – the county town and administrative centre, the fourth largest town in Wiltshire
- Westbury – home to one of England's most famous hillside white horses
Villages
- — a village surrounded by the largest neolithic stone circle in Europe
- Box — site of the famous Box Railway tunnel and home to musicians Peter Gabriel and Midge Ure
- – site of Bratton Castle (or Camp) an Iron Age hill fort
- Castle Combe (pronounced coom) – a small pretty village north west of Chippenham
- Lacock – a village dating back to the 13 th century, owned almost in its entirety by the National Trust, site of Lacock Abbey and the William Fox-Talbot museum
- – a large village with a main line rail station
- Wilton – a medium sized village to the west of Salisbury
- – a large village on the road between Swindon and Avebury
Other destinations
- Stonehenge – the world's most well known prehistoric monument
Get in
By train
Great Western Railways serves the north of county (Chippenham, Swindon) to and from London Paddington, Bristol, Cardiff and Cornwall. South Western Railway serves destinations including Salisbury and Tisbury in the south on their line between Exeter and London Waterloo.By car
The M4 serves Swindon and the north, while the A303 is the main trunk road further south, passing (controversially) right next to Stonehenge.By plane
Wiltshire has no airports. The closest major options are probably Bristol, Southampton, and London Heathrow or Gatwick.Get around
The train services listed in "Get In" link some of the bigger towns. Beyond that, like the rest of rural England, car is the best way of getting around, as public transport comes in the form of buses with generally limited coverage and low frequency, not to mention a confusing proliferation of operators. The Connecting Wiltshire website lists routes and timetables for those up for the challenge. A Wiltshire Day Rover, which covers all bus operators in the county (as well as routes to Bath, Frome, Southampton, and Oxford), costs £9, providing excellent value for longer trips.
See
-
phone: +44 1985 844400address: near Warminster, BA12 7JSElizabeath stately home, with safari park.
-
Silbury Hill
address: Marlboroughprehistoric artificial hill near Avebury, the tallest in Europe. -
phone: +44 1747 841152address: near Mere, BA12 6QDPalladian stately home with 1,072 hectare (2,650 acre) landscape garden, particularly famous for colourful foliage in autumn.
The White Horses of WiltshireWhite horses created by removing the grass on hills to reveal the white chalk underneath. Most are a few hundred years old, although the Uffington White Horse is at least 3,000 years old.